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What Kind of Spatial Disorientation Illusions Have You Experienced?

Asked by: 3087 views , , ,
Instrument Rating, Student Pilot

Have you personally experienced any illusions, and how was it?

Also, what would be good illusions to simulate in the airplane to gain experience and how would you do it? This would be with a safety pilot in VMC.

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3 Answers



  1. Kris Kortokrax on Feb 23, 2015

    The one that got my attention was a sloping cloud deck. That’ll be hard to simulate unless you have an FTD or ATD that can create it.

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  2. Jim F. on Feb 23, 2015

    As Kris said, best to hop in a sim. One of the best things an instructor/captain did for me (and I in turn user to help others with disorientation) was to turn on the strobes and wig-wags in IMC at night. Do that for a while and it seems to really help train your brain to ignore those phantom signals it gets and makes you focus on the instruments. But kinda hard to simulate this stuff in VMC…

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  3. Brian on Mar 01, 2015

    Get the sim set up so that you’re on an ILS to minimums, gusty conditions, and pause it at the FAF. Get out of the sim, put your nose to a baseball bat and run in circles till you can’t stand up. Now fly the approach.

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